Friday, January 6, 2017

make a mark every day. simple. don't worry about quality. this is about just making the effort. be quick. don't think. just draw. do anything: draw on a piece of paper, drag a stick in the sand, draw on your phone, paint ... whatever, as long as you make a mark. you ... have ... got ... to ... make ... a ... freaking ... mark. that's why you're here, asshole.

Friday, January 22, 2016

after months, many months, of feeling lost in my approach to art, of feeling like i had either forgotten how to paint or maybe lost a compelling why to paint, i feel like, today, for the first time, things are coalescing. the work from before (the creative collapse) and the work today. literally today, not a metaphor for "recent". walking by some old paintings in my studio just now, leaned against walls or propped on shelves, which typically get passed unnoticed, i saw or maybe felt a connection to the painting i just worked on. this may sound kind of silly. kind of "duh". as in, of course there should be some recognizable connection. thing is, i haven't felt it (or seen it) for quite some time. whether it was missing or i just was oblivious to some organic shift in my work (euphemism for a creative slump), i don't know, but i am certain that my work of the last year or two has been terribly confused and without focus, and only rarely did i achieve a decent result.

Friday, November 22, 2013

well, ok. so i worked on a couple of frames this morning. i donate a painting to work every christmas for an auction they do to raise money for charity, so that painting needed a frame. then i have the CAP auction deadline, so that one needs a frame too. then i did the laundry. then i fiddled with the car to try to fix my wobbly steering. i made a list of things to do today and checked off the things i had already done. i talked to a friend on the phone for 18 minutes.

i did all kinds of stuff to avoid this:

this is a painting from last friday. i started it two weeks ago, but today i was faced with this... thing. ugh. where to go?... it's big, too. don't know if you can tell from this photo. it's about five feet tall. i don't know, but that just makes it all the more intimidating.

so, procrastination be damned. nothing to it but to do it, right? i mean, i am a PAINTER dammit.

so here are the marks i made today. i had to move past that "central hub" motif i had going on. it was choking the painting and choking me. i think it's a better painting today than before, but only time will tell me what to do next. for now i'll just let it ferment a while.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Hello Friends! I am trying not to let the other parts of my life push out the visual part. I have been in the studio again, but this time of year I find the rich colors and world outside competes with my studio time.

I miss all of you and am going to insist we find a gathering before the year ends, and a show in 2014. I am going to return to posting once per week! Dave, thanks fro keeping us alive!